The Art of Disposal Read Free Page A

be? He's got it made right now. Sure, he ain't made made, but that's just a formality. Eddie don't care none about it. He's flipped the switch on all them guys.”
    “Meaning?”
    “Meaning that he's cleaned up so much of their shit and knows who done what in what pot that he can pull whatever strings he wants. No one'll touch him. He's kinda like J. Edgar Hoover, with those secret files.”
    “Minus the womens' underwear,” I said.
    Dan the Man laughed, and for a brief second I could imagine him as a little kid, maybe looking at a bird or something, full of joy about the world; and just as quick as I imagined it, the laughter ended and his eyes got hollow, like that little bit of soul had flown away, unwelcome in its own body. He cocked his neck and gripped hard on the steering wheel. The creases near his mouth made him look like a pale, dead crocodile.
    We parked and walked up the stairs to my apartment.
    “Let's have a look at her,” he said when we were inside.
    I walked him to my bedroom window. You could hear her out there, squawking and shouting at her kids the way she always did. I'd thought of moving out, just because of her. She weighed about as much as a small car, and she spent the days and nights sitting in a creaky lawn-chair on her front patio, smoking cigarettes and yelling and cursing with that God-awful voice of hers. It carried. Man, did it ever carry. It was a throaty hillbilly holler, and she exercised that thing more than Pavarotti. It made my blood boil.
    “I ever tell you about my first?” Dan said.
    I told him he hadn't.
    “I was on a hike. My backpack was sticking to my shirt, and I was always taking my hat off to wipe my head.”
    “How old were you?” I said.
    “Twenty-three,” Dan said. “About a mile out, a pretty young girl walks by with a golden retriever. I guess I have an old-fashioned streak. I ain't never voided a woman's warranty: don't matter if someone wants to pay me twenty grand. Anyway, I kept on walking. I'd almost given up on crossing paths with anyone else, so I tucked my knife away.”
    “What kind was it?”
    “USMC. The kind from World War Two. And what do you know, here comes a guy just asking for it. He's all alone, walking down the steep hill. Got a walking stick and a floppy hat. I think, yeah, I can do this. I can do this.”
    Dan the Man's stony voice gets a sing-songiness to it if he talks for any length of time. An excited, frantic kind of rhythm.
    “So the nerd tips his hat and says hello, and I say, excuse me, is it this way out to Silver Needle Falls? And I fumble around with the map I brung along, and I know damn well that Silver Needle Falls is off a whole other trail system, but I say it just to get him talking.
    “Next thing I know I have the knife out of its sheath, and the whole length of the blade is sunk deep into his gut. I'm holding the knife and he's holding onto my hands and looking right into my eyes. I'll never forget them eyes, saying why, why, why?
    “My heart was pounding, and I was sure that with my luck, someone else would come right along that very minute. So I worked him over to the edge of the trail and I pushed him off of the knife, and watched him roll down into the woods. And when he thumped down there on the ground, he made some wet gurgles, and he let out a low moan like an injured hound dog. And that was it. The woods was more quiet and calm than they ever was, and a bird started singing right away, chirping out the happiest tune. So that tells you something.”
    “What does it tell you?” I said.
    “That there ain't no God. If there was, the bird would've sung a sad song, or not sung nothing at all.”
    “Did you feel bad about it?”
    “I killed him quick. He would've died someday anyway. In this line of work, there ain't no room for feelings. You're either born without 'em, or you learn to get rid of 'em.”
    I sat for a moment, remembering something I'd read a long time ago. Then I said:
    “Socrates says 'the